“What about physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy?”

“Oh, it’s all there. You can look it up,” Arl said. “But it’s for machines, of course, the research. People don’t think fast enough. Can’t remember enough.”

Matt was speechless. He looked at Martha for support. She was frowning at Em and Arl in confusion. “How can machines think?”

“They’ve been doing it for thousands of years,” Em said.

“More than two centuries before you were born, machine intelligence transformed the world.” Arl said. “When religious fanatics took over your part of the world, they got rid of most thinking machines. They kept the ones they needed, evidently, like the killer satellites that keep us out of their airspace.”

“It’s not Avenging Angels, dear.” Em offered her some cheese and apple slices. “Just machines, like the one that brought you here.”

She stared blankly at the food. “Is there somewhere I could talk to the professor alone? Back in the bank vault . . . time machine?”

“Sure,” Arl said. “Auction won’t close for almost a half hour.”

When they were outside, she took his hand and rushed him silently to the vault. Inside, she sat down on the stack of dollar coin sacks and stared at him.

“I feel like I’m going crazy. Like I’m in a crazy dream, a nightmare, and can’t wake up. You have to explain what’s going on.”

“Okay. My time machine took us 2094 years into the future—”

“Before that. You were running away from Jesus.”

“Yes and no. I needed money for travel . . .”

“Well, you got that.”

“But I didn’t mean to rob a bank.” Steal a bank, actually. “I was just going to cash in some old money for a thousand or so, and take it back, with the time machine, to where Jesus appears. Then use the machine to take me and all the machines in that room up into the future.

“I didn’t mean to kidnap you. I’m sorry. It’s an awful reward for saving a person’s life.”

She shook her head. “You and I think differently about rewards. I think God rewards us for good works and punishes us for bad. He puts us in positions where we have to make choices.”

Matt could only shrug.

“You were going to use your machine to take Jesus away. The illusion of Jesus, you said.”

“That, yes, but also to get out of Cambridge while I still had the option of escaping.”

She chewed on her lower lip for a moment. “So maybe God, or maybe chance, put me between you and that policeman. Why was he shooting at you?”

“Um . . . that’s a little embarrassing.” She just stared at him. “I went into the toilet to take a pee. The policeman was there, and he saw I wasn’t circumcised. Do you know what that is?”

She closed her eyes and shuddered. “They cut a part away from your thingie.”

“Well, the church I was born into required that. But my mother and father decided against letting them do it.”

“Really?” She smiled. “Me, too. My mother wouldn’t let them circumcise me, when I was a girl.”

“They circumcise women?”

“Unless the mother objects. Mother had to pay a fine and do penance for a year.”

“Why do they do it?”

“Well, why do they do it to you?”

“It’s just a custom left over from the old days, and it made some sense when men didn’t bathe regularly. But it doesn’t have the same effect as on women, on girls.”

“What is that supposed to be?”

“They didn’t tell you?”

“Nothing specific, not yet. That’s a big part of my next passage, when I turn twenty-one. Next month.”

“In some cultures, mostly before I was born, they did it to deny sexual pleasure to women.”

She shook her head in two small jerks. “I wouldn’t know anything about that, not yet. I’m not allowed.”

“You will be, after you’re twenty-one?”

“I don’t know. If they told you the secrets before your Passage, they wouldn’t be secrets.” Her blush indicated that she did know something. “So how did you make everything disappear? How did you turn this bank vault into a time machine?”

He lifted the machine out of the bag. “This is the actual time machine.” He tapped on the plastic dome. “If I push this button, it goes forward in time. And takes everything nearby along with it.” He held up the alligator clip. “If this little thing is in contact with a metal container, like this vault, then everything inside the container goes.”

“But just one way. You can’t go back.”

“I don’t know how, yet. But I’m sure it can be done. Not in my time and certainly not in yours. Another reason I had to move forward. But I’m sorry I dragged you along.”

“Don’t be. There’s a reason for everything.”

There was a whisper like a giant exhaling, and a vehicle drifted to a landing between them and the house. It was a sleek functional airfoil, as reflective as mercury, shimmering except for the solid blue block letters LA.

Matt checked his watch. “Auction should be closing now.”

She was hypnotized. “That’s what you fly in?”

“Nowadays, I guess so. If you can afford it.” As they walked by the thing, she gaped at her fun-house-mirror reflection. “It makes you look pregnant.”

She smiled. “That would have been right after the Passage. At least you saved me from that.”

Maybe so, he was thinking, and maybe not. I ought to keep an eye out for Safeluv patches, or whatever they use up here.

They looked at the thing for a minute, and nothing happened. “I guess it’ll tell us when it’s ready.”

The door to the house opened. Arl looked at the ship and didn’t react. “Congratulations. The museum got it for 62,037. Come in and look at your choices.”

“Choices?” They followed him back to the dining room. In the air over the platform there was a glowing list of about a hundred things and services with their BC value. An ancient Egyptian ring for BC 50,000—that would be practical.

“What, we can’t just take the B chits?”

“That would be, well, extremely impolite. Almost illegal. But you can maximize the valuta change by picking something of low value—though of course you do need 9300 in valuta for my commission.”

“There’s the cheapest thing,” Martha said. The label was Plastic dildo, late 22nd, no batteries, BC 400. She touched the line, and an enlarged holo appeared.

She jerked her hand away. “Oh my.” It was very realistic.

“Maybe,” Em said. “You probably want something small and tradable. But without batteries, I don’t know.”

“Maybe this.” Matt touched a line to make the embarrassing image go away. This one said German Fernglasmaschine circa 2200, 5X-500X, BC 1800. It looked like a small pair of binoculars with handgrips and a box like a battery case underneath.

“The Germans are good with those,” Arl said, “but I have a Chinese pair almost as good, even older, that I’d let go of for half that.”

Los Angeles appeared next to the glowing list. “Your chariot awaits, Dr. Fuller.”

“Professor,” he said automatically, not having a real doctorate. “Let’s take the binoculars?” he said to Martha.

“Please, let’s,” she said, either eager to leave or anxious that he might choose the other.

“This one,” Arl said with his finger on the line, which blinked twice and disappeared. “It will be here in a day or so.” There was a black box next to the platform. He opened it with a thumb-swipe. It enclosed stacks of BC bills; he carefully counted out BC 50,851 and handed the thick stack to Matt. “Minus my commission and the dress. Don’t worry about the cheese and coffee.”

Matt put the thick wad into his pants pocket. “Thanks, um . . . see you soon.”

“La willing,” they both said.

Matt and Martha followed Los Angeles out the door. She didn’t bother to pretend walking, but drifted like a solid daytime ghost.

“ ‘La willing’?”

“They call me La,” she said. “Ell Ay.” Doors had opened in the craft, resembling the wings of a coasting seabird. La slipped into a swivel chair in the front.